Monday, June 25, 2012

Prickly Pear Soda... in KC?

One day back in May, my 17 year old sauntered into the room and said, “Do you know what I’d really like right now?”Having no clue, and being an adult, I replied, “Punched in the face?”(Hey, what’s the use of having a 17 year old around if you can’t act silly once in a while?)He actually replied “No”, which made us all laugh.“What I’d really like right now is that cactus lemonade that they served us every afternoon at that hotel we stayed at in Arizona.”“Oh, yeah,” I responded, my mouth instantly starting to water, “that stuff was great!”I hadn’t thought about cactus lemonade in years, he was ten or eleven when we were there.The Buttes Resort in Tempe served ruby red colored Prickly Pear Cactus juice squeezed into a pitcher of lemonade; making it look just like normal pink lemonade, but with a very distinct flavor. We all observed a moment of silence as we remembered the Cactus Lemonade and how much fun we had on that trip.After the moment had passed, we all went about our business; after all, there wasn’t anything we could do about that craving here in Kansas City, right?

Image posted by "Frank"

﻿Well, a couple of days later, while checking out the new restaurants section on Urbanspoon, I came across “Little Freshie”, in the photo section, someone with the moniker of “Frank” had posted an image entitled “Lemon Prickly Pear Soda”.What!Unbelievable!This had to be a sign.I had a new mission, get to Little Freshie and sample that soda!Well, as it turned out, that mission became almost impossible, trying to triangulate all three of our schedules to be in the same place, at the same time, before 6 PM when Little Freshie closes was tough.Whew! (**wipes perspiration from forehead**) It took a month, but we finally managed to make this happen.

Three doors down (from the Blue Bird Bistro on 17th) we were laughin’ and drinkin’ (sodas) and having a party.Well it wasn’t really a party, but we were having a great time with the very personable woman who was working.We each ordered a cactus lemonade soda.As it turned out, they don’t have such a thing, so we settled for Prickly Pear Cactus Sodas, sans the lemonade part. Unlike the image posted by Frank, our sodas were deep fuchsia colored, my anticipation was high, I grabbed my soda, and took a big swig through the grey and white paper straw… “Hmm… I think this Prickly Pear Soda is a bit too prickly for me. What do you guys think?”I said nearly under my breath to the other two, so that the wonderful and kind woman working wouldn't hear.“It’s really earthy,” responded my son.“Do you like it?”“It’s really earthy,” came the reply.“So, you don’t like it.”“It’s really earthy,” “Hhhh,” I sighed.“I wouldn’t order it again,” was my spouse’s response.“So, you don’t like it.”“I didn’t say that, it’s just not something that I would order again.”I nodded my head in agreement.Oh well, if we ever get back to Tempe, we’ll have something else to look forward to.

All was not lost though.They also serve something called French Macarons.The macarons are like sandwich cookies with two very soft, puffy wafers made of meringue separated by a creamy buttercream middle. We tried the almond, and the Blueberry/Hyacinth.The Blueberry Hyacinth was our favorite of the two.We found out that these were from Natasha’s Mulberry and Mott.Wow.I gotta go there.

Little Freshie is cute, cute, cute. I'm glad it's here. This whole area around 17th and Summit has really grown up over the past few years to become a great destination for food.There are quite a few establishments now, all of them are good.We determined that we had to come back and try a different soda in the very near future.It ended up an enjoyable time, just as it always does. I wish you could have been there with us.